Posted on 04/01/2022 12:34:05 PM PDT by Red Badger
The Airbus A380 recently completed its first flight on 100 percent sustainable fuelAirbus VIEW 1 IMAGES
As part of a broader push on part of the aviation industry to reduce its carbon footprint, Airbus has conducted the first ever flight of its giant A380 jumbo jet using 100 percent biofuel. This is the third Airbus aircraft to fly using the sustainable fuel made up of primarily cooking oil, as the company works to certify the technology by the end of the decade.
The aircraft featured in the groundbreaking flight is the Airbus ZEROe Demonstrator, an A380 adapted for use as a flying testbed and one the company plans to also use to test out hydrogen combustion jet engines.
For this particular outing, the aircraft was loaded up with 27 tonnes of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), made mostly with cooking oil and waste fats. This powered the A380's Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine across a three-hour test flight out of the Blagnac Airport in Toulouse France on March 28, with a second flight then carrying it all the way to Nice Airport on March 29.
This demonstration follows successful flights of the Airbus A350 and the Airbus A319neo single-aisle plane using SAF last year. Using the biofuel to now power the world's largest passenger jet marks another step forward for the testing program, as Airbus aspires to bring the world's first zero-emission aircraft to market by 2035.
Airbus isn't alone in pursuing cleaner aviation with the help of cooking oil. Way back in 2012, Boeing made the first biofuel-powered Pacific crossing in its 787 Dreamliner using a mix of regular jet fuel and fuel derived mainly from cooking oil. In 2014, it even opened up a biofuel production plant in China based to ensure a consistent supply.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
Looked on the government website:
Extra Revenue for Farmers
By growing biomass crops for SAF production, American farmers can earn more money during off seasons by providing feedstocks to this new market, while also securing benefits for their farms like reducing nutrient losses and improving soil quality.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels
So this WAS food meant for people. Looks like they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.
With looming food shortages, what we need to be working on are ways to burn our food as fuel...
This is interesting. Some while back I read an article and watched a video about a guy who converted his car to diesel fuel and then was able to strike a deal with restaurants in his town by taking their waste kitchen grease and recycling it into fuel.
A lot of racing fuels are made of castor beans. I would attend flat-track motorcycle races a long time ago and all the bikes ran on the castor-oil fuel. It left a vapor and a peculiar smell in the air but apparently it’s harmless. Unlike gasoline.
The guy who recycled restaurant grease (he had a home distillery in a little shed behind his house!) said that after about two years it amounted to him getting free gas for his internal combustion engine car.
AND a LOT more fertilizer runoff into our rivers, lakes and the Gulf causing all sorts of problems. Not to mention the huge amount of fossil fuel to run all the ag machinery, produce the needed fertilizer for the crops, refine the fuel, and get it to market.
These people are insane. It totally FAILS from a systems perspective. This ridiculous process consumes far more fuel than it produces (just like Ethanol in gasoline).
Probably dirtier than the regular they use
The “mileage” of jets is calculated in “air nautical miles per pound”, and the amount of fuel is given in pounds, not gallons.
I’m thinking the mileage of the 380 was “air nautical miles per ton”. Any inputs from the folks who fly the big stuff? (I only flew the trainer & fighter stuff.)
I wonder what the weight differential is between kerosene, Jet A and biofuels?..........
The smell of French fries everywhere from coast to coast.
Of course this causes all kinds of problems like the ones you mentioned. But this is all about virtue signaling.
OR BACON!>............................
vegetable oil going for about 8 bucks a gallon
Why?
Oh great. Now Joe will be demanding all US aircraft use biofuel starting net year.
How much more did this “fuel” cost above regular jet fuel?
Passengers disembarked smelling like french fries!
No words as to the $$$$ cost or the energy required to produce this stuff!
If dino jet fuel is costing the average US airline in the $2.50 range (I am sure that it is more expensive now; this is the best I could come up with), this biofuel HAS GOT TO BE MORE EXPENSIVE!
This technology used used cooking oil that would otherwise end up in landfills rotting to leechate and gas emissions that have to be captured and cleaned up: or they use animals fats that no longer are used in the human food chain in large amounts such as beef tallow or sheep tallow. A 1200lb steer is 750lb gutted and skinned and only 425 lbs of meat the rest is fats and bones there is an ENORMOUS amount of beef tallow produced every year. It.makes a nice flowing SAF or biodiesel with good cold flow properties which is essential for high altitude flight. Waste not want not. Aviation is only a few percentage of total USA fuel use per year. About 13 billion gallons. A good portion of that can be covered by the huge waste oil amounts produced in restaurants, food processing plants, rendering plants for carcasses and from slaughter houses. Aviation will always need a high density power source. Liquid fuels be it hydrocarbons or alcohols make the most sense. Liquid H2 could work as well but its handling at cryo temps is not ideal.
What are you smoking even before the run up in oil prices Jet A at FBO KAD in Addison was $6 a gallon at DFW similar but in bulk it was $5.80 now both are over $7 Jet A is always vastly more expensive than K1, #2 or MoGas.
Yeah, I wanna ride in that. /s
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